


But She Hesitated

by hystericpolaris



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Character Study?, Gen, Mild Blood, Minor Character Death, Minor Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-19
Updated: 2016-01-19
Packaged: 2018-05-14 21:48:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 4,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5760091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hystericpolaris/pseuds/hystericpolaris
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She thought on their orders and on that human’s hopeful determination and wondered...how different were humans from monsters, <em> really</em>?</p><p>If her orders were to kill seven <em> monsters </em> to free her people from the Underground, would she be able to complete her mission <em> then</em>?</p><p>Her fingers curled up into her palms and dug themselves painfully under the scales there, knowing the answer without even having to think about it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Waterfall

Under the cover of darkness and refreshing mist, Undyne quietly stalked her prey from the strategic cover of a convenient cliffside in Waterfall. Sans was lazy, but he certainly had a good eye for detail. Not a single guard on duty in Snowdin other than him had noticed this human sneak in from the Ruins. Once the runt had made it into Waterfall, they were in _her_ territory. All it would take is _one_ well-aimed spear, and…

But she hesitated.

She watched carefully as the human visibly shivered and took shelter from the rain under a particularly large mushroom. They didn’t seem dangerous or threatening at all, let alone armed; their fight would be unamusingly one-sided.

Is this what she’d trained so hard for? To bully and kill innocent individuals? There was no telling if this human was _actually_ innocent, but so far, on Sans and her own watch, they couldn’t even seem to bring themselves to _approach_ a monster, let alone attack any of them. They just seemed frightened and desperate to go home.

Deep down, she felt so conflicted; she wanted to help them. When she was sworn into the Royal Guard, was not one of her vows to _protect_ the innocent? ( _Did_ that include humans…?) But in her mind, she knew what she had to do. She had her orders. _Gotta remember: It’s our freedom,_ she reminded herself, focusing her spear magic in her left hand to prepare for attack, _or theirs._

But _still_ , she hesitated.

 _It...wouldn’t be a fair fight to strike them down now_ , she reasoned with herself. Their orders were to “capture seven human souls;” King Asgore said nothing about _how_ they had to do it. If she was going to take their life, it’d be on her _own_ terms, she resolved.

She watched as the human curled up under the mushroom and fell asleep, using their torn notebook as a makeshift pillow. It’d been a long day, for everyone. _They pose no threat to anyone like this. I’ll strike when the time is right._

With that thought, Undyne accepted the loss and walked away.


	2. Gerson

The next day, despite being early to rise, Undyne had somehow lost track of the human; the mushroom from yesterday was now vacant. Undyne clenched her fists in frustration and marched deeper into Waterfall. Their legs were much shorter than hers and they had retired earlier than she, so they couldn’t’ve gotten far.

 _Who knows what evil they’re plotting_ , she thought, attempting to convince herself she was still doing the right thing. _I give them enough rope and their little innocence routine’ll dry up like a cup of water in Hotland. I’ve_ got _to stop them._

Using basic hunting tactics, Undyne was able to trace the human’s footprints and passing conversations to Gerson’s storefront. They weren’t very skilled at covering their tracks. But then again, the human _was_ still a child.

“Ah, if it ain’t the little urchin!” Gerson chirped as Undyne strolled in. She unabashedly ignored him and began scanning the storefront for the human.

“I’m here on business, Gerson,” she informed him dismissively, avoiding eye contact. She continued to pretend she was searching the storefront for visual clues, even though it was obvious that the human hadn’t been here in quite some time. The last thing she wanted to do was admit the reason she was here, knowing the guilt trip she’d surely receive--or rather, the guilt she would surely feel--when he discovered to what end his hero training was now being used. Hopefully, he’d just tell her what he knew about the human’s whereabouts without being prompted and let her be on her way.

But they both knew he just wasn’t that kind of tortoise.

“What, no time to chat with your old friend Gerson now that you’re in the Guard?” he asked playfully. “How rude, nothing at all like that sweet kiddo from earlier,” he added with a grin.

 _Here we go_ , she cringed, _he knows...he’s gonna make me ask, isn’t he…_ Gerson was her _only_ reliable lead at the moment; she _had_ to take the bait.

“How much earlier? Where were they headed?” she probed impatiently.

“Y’know, in fact, that kid reminds me of another sweet kid I used to know.” He put his hand to his chin and looked up at the ceiling of his cave contemplatively. “She was nowhere as reserved as this kid, but she was just as passionate, kind-hearted and virtuous.” He nodded to himself. “A real hero,” he added; a fresh, bitter coarseness to his words.

Unsuccessfully shrugging off his blatant goading, Undyne attempted to, instead, intimidate an answer out of him.

“You have an obligation to your people to tell me what you know,” she threatened, stepping forward with a hesitant quake in the soles of her boots.

But, as expected, Gerson didn’t waver. “And _you_ have an obligation to _yourself_ to not let that little girl down,” he asserted, poking boldly at the chestplate of Undyne’s armor. “If you go through with what you plan to do, do you think she’d be proud of the person she grew up to be?”

Undyne’s throat began to tighten. She remembered being a ruthless runt who’d fight anyone and everyone to prove she was strongest. And she wasn’t that kid anymore. But no matter how right he was, it didn’t change her orders.

Her silence spoke volumes.

Gerson squinted at her in disbelief and waited a few more moments for a response before continuing, but his patience went unrewarded. “You know where they’re headed,” he submitted apprehensively, busying himself with facing his products and taking inventory. “They just want to go home. And if you’re half the hero I trained you to be, you’ll make sure they succeed.”


	3. Hotland

Undyne unpacked a water bottle from her bag and took a quick swig, unceremoniously wiping its remains from her lips with the back of her hand. She hated missions and trainings that required trips through Hotland. Fish monsters were so ill-equipped for this terrain and climate.

Normally, the members of the Royal Guard who patrolled Hotland would’ve taken over once the target had been confirmed escaping her clutches in Waterfall and making it here, but she refused to let the rest of her unit know that she’d failed. Er, hesitated? Postponed would be more accurate. She was just waiting until the timing was right!

Undyne stopped in her tracks, tossed her head back and sighed heavily at the sky. If she’d just not hesitated when she’d cornered the human back in Waterfall, she wouldn’t be waist-deep in this wild goose chase right now. Gerson most likely told them _exactly_ how to get to the castle, so they _had_ to have come this way. But now, she had no idea where the human had run off to or where they were hiding, and her tracking skills were only at their peak in her own element; not so much in this scorching, desolate wasteland.

In the midst of her fruitless human hunt, through the squiggly, sweltering air, Undyne spotted a fellow member of the Royal Guard. The closer to the castle they were stationed, the higher their rank, so whoever was up ahead must’ve been one of the top five ranking guards. She couldn’t let them discover she’d allowed that human to escape her clutches… Worse yet, if they killed the human in her stead, they'd not only find out she’d failed at her mission, but also deliberately failed to report the human’s progress to her superiors...she’d be tossed out of the Guard in a heartbeat! Her short, muscular career flashed before her eyes.

And so did the distant silhouette of a certain small human. _Shit!_

“H-Heya!!” she shouted suddenly, sprinting up to her fellow guardsman, who was hard at work...texting on their cell phone. “What’s up, Zerooo...” she tried to trail her words casually until they turned around far enough that she’d recognize them by number, “Five!” Undyne gave him a firm pat on the back and steered him out of peripheral view of the human. _Run, you loser!_

“...hi, 19,” 05 responded with trepidation; a hint of suspicion in his deep, gravelly voice. “...um,” he continued, unsure of how to ask her why she was shirking her duties without seeming rude, “...why are you here…?”

Undyne patted his back harder, giving a boisterous laugh, hoping it would be loud enough to scare the human out of the area. “Why, I’m here to brag, of course! For taking out our first human! One down, six to go, am I right? Fuhuhu!”

05 squinted at Undyne as she looked right through him, conspicuously scanning the area for something. He took his own glance around but couldn’t figure out what she was looking for. Were they being watched or something?

“...enough games, rookie,” he warned, removing her hand from his back. “...if you’d harvested the human soul that Sans reported the other day...we would’ve heard about it...just like we would’ve heard about the human escaping Waterfall...which means...they’re still in _your_ sector…”

05 turned on his heel and began to walk away, unamused by her antics, fueling Undyne’s rage as she began to feel not only insulted, but disrespected. She was as strong and capable as any other guard on the force, no matter how recently she’d been appointed. How dare he imply...

He stopped for a moment. “...I don’t know what you’re playing at...but--”

With a feral snarl, Undyne had heard enough, and leapt forward to seize 05 roughly by the shoulder. She spun him around to face her and spawned an energy spear aimed directly at his throat.

“ _Who you callin’ a rookie, punk?_ ” she growled, teeth barred. The human and her mission completely blinded from her mindsight.

05 calmly stared down the length of her spear, its bright blue luminescence shining ominously off his reflective scales from under his chin.

“...get back to your post and do your job…”

With that, he was gone, and so was the human.

Undyne’s face flushed a deep indigo in embarrassment as she hung her head and let her spear dematerialize from her grasp.

_What am I even doing this for?_


	4. Core

Having watched which direction the human had been headed while distracting 05 in Hotland, Undyne had a fairly good idea which path they would be taking into the Core, and knowing that area even the _slightest_ bit better than them gave her the homefield advantage. She’d tracked them _this_ long, so taking into account their observed stealth patterns and what little she knew about the architecture of the Core, she planted herself about a mile up from where she estimated the human was currently traveling and took some time to clear her head.

To plan what she was going to say.

Deep down, Undyne knew that conversation wasn’t the true solution here; action was. But deeper down, in her heart, she felt the opposite. For once. Then again, this was no _typical_ confrontation... Normally, she wouldn’t hesitate to engage friend _or_ foe in battle, but never to... _kill_. She fought others for pride, to push her limits, to prove herself…not to...

Even though she understood what her orders were when she got them, she didn’t think much of them at the time. Taking the life of the one for the greater good of the many, especially for someone as skilled in battle as herself, seemed like a logical task for any royal soldier. Though, thinking on those orders now, having watched this gutsy, young human persevere through the absence of family and friends, the completely alien environments, all alone...traversing nearly the entire Underground on wit and survival skills to achieve their goal…

She thought on their orders and on that human’s hopeful determination and wondered...how different were humans from monsters, _really_?

If her orders were to kill seven _monsters_ to free her people from the Underground, would she be able to complete her mission _then_?

Her fingers curled up into her palms and dug themselves painfully under the scales there, knowing the answer without even having to think about it.

Would she be able to complete her mission at _all_ now? What kind of... _fucked up_ mission _was_ this anyway? _That human...is just a_ child…

“I know you’ve been following me…! Show y-yourself!” a timid voice bravely called out, the tiny voice echoing off the walls of the Core’s thin hallways.

Undyne was snapped from her contemplation and glanced down from her perch above the short corridor to see the human standing there, pointing their book at her with a shaky hand.

_I...don’t think...I can kill them…_

“Very perceptive, human,” she replied confidently despite her thoughts, voice cracking a bit at the ends of her words; the harsh realities of her mission finally sinking in at the absolute worst possible time. She leapt down from her ledge and landed a couple meters away from them.

“What do you want from me!? Are you reporting my whereabouts to your leader??” the human probed fearfully, holding their oversized, ragged tome in front of themselves defensively.

Undyne dropped her head a moment and chuckled. “If I did that, kid, I’d’ve been fired days ago.” She took a few steps forward toward them and held out her hand. “Undyne, Royal Guard 19. Nice to meet ya’.”

The human looked at her hand and back up at her without moving a muscle. She recognized a mix of bravery and terror quaking in the depths of their eyes.

“N-Nice try, _monster_ ,” they replied, trying their best to sound courageous. They took a step backward, away from Undyne, watching her thin smile stretch into a wide scowl as she let her offered hand drop back to her side. “I’ve read enough books to know _exactly_ why you’ve been following me… You’re just trying to earn my trust so you can _eat_ me! That’s why you’re following me, right!?” Their voice raised in pitch with each terrified sentence.

“ _What do you want from me_!?” they yelled again, clutching tightly at their torn notebook.

Undyne’s brows furrowed and eyes narrowed. That look of fear again… She understood that they were just a scared child who wanted to go home--she couldn’t begin to imagine how unsure and alone they must be feeling, trapped all alone down here--but she couldn’t help taking offense at that _damned look_ …

Undyne lifted her chin cockily, staring down at the human. She was unable to resist the ingrained urge to return the cruelty of that look in kind, and let a spear materialize loosely in her palm. She didn’t intend to harm them, but wanted to drive home who was in power here.

“Your soul.”

Their eyes widened and breath quickened, eyes fixated on her spear. They took several unsteady steps backward, nearly tripping over their own untied shoelaces.

Undyne took a single step forward, eyes locked on her prey. “That’s right, my “leader,” as you call him, wants me to harvest your soul,” she warned them calmly. “Your soul is one of the only things standing between my kind and our freedom.” She smiled wryly and continued, “Honestly, yours would be a noble sacrifice... But,” she let her spear fizzle away so she could fold her arms across her chest, “I’m not keen on unfair fights.”

The human stared at her, puzzled, looking ready to cry anyway, despite being effectively told that she _wasn’t_ going to kill them. With an annoyed sigh, Undyne tossed them a small shield from her pack. It clattered against the metal flooring between them.

“Use that. Defend yourself.” She assumed a melee battle position and summoned several spears above her head. “Prove to me your perseverance--your determination to live-- _and I’ll escort you out of the Underground myself_.”

Their head tilted back to look up at all the spears above, then looked back down at the shield at their feet. Without taking their eyes off their enemy, they leaned forward and hesitantly picked up the shield, securing it to their arm.

Just as Undyne was about to initiate the battle, she noticed their entire body begin to tremble. They were planning something; something that was making their body surge with adrenaline.

_They’re planning to flee._

Undyne made a halfhearted attempt to stop the human, flinging one of her spears at the ground where they originally stood, but beyond that, she simply looked on as they bolted desperately toward what she was sure they believed to be the Core’s exit. Their next stop was likely the castle, but she was quickly running out of the energy to care anymore.

 _Do I even_ want _to be in the Royal Guard anymore? If this is what I’m going to be expected to do...?_

Knowing that they were now carrying significantly more weight on them than before, and that they would inevitably continue to have a difficult time navigating the metallic maze that was the Core, she simply followed behind them at a casual pace.

As long as she stopped them from reaching the castle, she’d be golden. There were no guardsmen stationed this far out. No one around to discover how badly she’d botched her mission.

Now that she knew the human was unwilling to cooperate and had openly refused the opportunity to engage in a fair fight, that meant she didn’t have to help them make it home, right? She’d offered them a fair ultimatum and they blew their chance…so now, she could kill them in the name of King and country without remorse...right?

_Right...?_


	5. King's Castle

Undyne growled in frustration, combing the front yard of Asgore’s home for the human.

“ _Damnit_!!” she hissed quietly through her misaligned, bulky teeth. She had underestimated their cleverness and overestimated her own knowledge of the Core’s layout, losing them _just_ before the exit.

This was not a sufficiently efficient task to be completed by _hand_ though… Her penalty for destroying the King’s landscaping versus her penalty for letting the human make it _this_ far was…incomparable. So, materializing dozens of spears, she began to blindly project them into the trees and bushes and corners of his front yard, hoping to flush out that pesky shrimp.

 _Success!_ Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed the runt run out from behind the bush in the right-hand corner of the yard.

“ _I’ve got you now, punk!!_ ” she growled, hurling every remaining spear in the air at her mobile target.

Performing an impressive somersault with the shield she’d given them strapped to their back, the human was _very_ tactically able to dodge or block _every_ spear she’d thrown. At that point, her blood began to truly pump, finally being put up to a less frustrating, less one-sided challenge.

With a toothy grin and adrenaline now laced deep into her veins, she chased them into the King’s home, flinging open the front door so hard that it loudly thwacked against the wall on the other side. As soon as the human hopped the staircase banister and bounded down the stairs, the reality of the situation washed over her.

_If King Asgore didn’t know they were here before, he sure as heck knows now. This is the end of my career as I know it…_

Using her fear of failure as her ammunition, she pushed herself to chase after them harder and faster than she ever had chased after anything in her life. Capturing the human at this point wouldn’t save her pride or her career, but, it would help save her people, and that’s all that mattered, right? _That’s_ the reason she worked so hard to join the Royal Guard in the first place, _right_??

And as far as she was concerned, this human just stole away her entire livelihood…

_What kind of life possibly awaits an insubordinate failure like me after this anyway...?_

“NggaaaaAAA _AAHHHHH_!” she roared, running on an autopilot fueled by pure rage and desperation. Undyne bounded after the human down the basement corridor at lightning speed.

Hearing this, the child gave their own pathetic, high-pitched scream, knowing their life was on the line, but simply unable to push their tiny, overtaxed body to run much faster than they were already travelling.

“NonononNONONONOONO _PLEASE_!!” the child screamed, Undyne could practically hear the tears cascading from their eyes.

 _This unarmed_ child _is running for their life...from_ me...And as much as this broke her heart to know, it was much too late to change her body’s course. Her rage and adrenaline--her own anxieties and fears--wouldn’t let her body stop.

Wouldn’t let her hesitate anymore.

Her body didn’t even hesitate as the pair burst through the oversized courtyard door simultaneously, startling the King. King Asgore whipped around, having been enjoying a cup of warm tea in his tranquil flower garden, just in time to witness Undyne give one more feral scream before impaling the child through the back with one of her spears. The child’s cloudy glasses and torn notebook tumbled to the ground from the momentum of the impact.

Coming to grips with the gravity of what she’d just done, her feet ground her body to a halt just short of the child’s corpse, which was morbidly sliding slowly down the arm of her spear and trickling into a moderate puddle of thick, crimson over the bright yellow bouquets below.

Terrified by her own actions, their consequences, and herself, her gaze shot up to meet King Asgore’s, as a child to their parent, desperately begging for approval. Begging for forgiveness. Begging to know that that didn’t just happen; that everything would be okay.

But no such look was present in his eyes.

She’d never seen the King look at her like that before in all the years she’d known him. _That_ look…that look that made her feel like she was some kind of horrifying demon...

She winced and shook off the pain best she could. She still had a job to do.

Trying to salvage what little she could of the situation, she desperately attempted to muffle her tears and gag reflex as she fumbled through her pack to retrieve one of the specialized soul containers Dr. Alphys had prepared for this mission. She had to act fast to preserve this human’s soul; she couldn’t afford to hesitate now.

Dissolving away her energy spear from her victim’s body, their limp cadaver hit the ground with a macabre thump and she clumsily extracted their soul into the container. The human’s lifeless husk just continued to _lay_ there, bleeding out, making her sick and refusing to dissolve into dust; taunting her as if to say, “I will never let you forget that _you_ did this.”

She stumbled toward the King, her adrenaline quickly retreating from her muscles in the aftermath, leaving her feeling on the verge of collapse. Once she had hobbled close enough, she offered the softly-glowing purple soul to her King with her bloodstained hands, unwilling to look him in the eyes again.

He noticeably hesitated before accepting the soul from her. His hands were shaking, too. Probably attempting to stay strong and true to his orders in the wake of the devastating massacre that just occurred before him, and also to support Undyne when she was most fragile, he reached out to give her a reassuring pat on the back, but she shrugged his hand off of herself and sharply turned away from him.

Undyne swallowed loudly. “This isn’t why I joined the Royal Guard,” she whispered, unsure if she was speaking more to him or to herself. Looking on blankly at the youthful candle she’d just extinguished, still in shock and disgust at her own homicidal capabilities, each word uttered seemed to harshly crack and gurgle painfully in her throat.

“...I know,” King Asgore replied softly, obviously unsure of what else he could possibly say to her in this situation.

“...I wonder...what their name was.”

“...”

With that, Undyne limped over to the child, picked up their mementos delicately, and delivered them to the only monster who knew.


End file.
